Monday, May 25, 2015

20th Century Oz (1976)

After decades in which
producers largely abstained from adapating L. Frank Baum’s Oz books, presumably to avoid comparisons with the timeless MGM
musical The Wizard of Oz (1939), the
’70s saw a handful of bold new interpretations. The most famous of these
projects is the all-black musical The Wiz,
which hit Broadway in 1975 before becoming a film in 1979, but a lesser-known
spin on Baum’s fictional universe emerged from Down Under around the same time.

Released in Australia in 1976 and the Unites States a year later, 20th Century Oz—which was originally
titled Oz: A Rock n Roll Road Movie—mostly
squanders the brilliant notion of placing Dorothy Gale’s story within a modern
glam-rock context. Writer-director Chris Löfvén seems to run out of creative
gas at regular intervals, as if the chore of replacing Baum’s fantastical
characters with real-world avatars is just too much. Additionally, it occasionally
seems as if Löfvén is riffing specifically off MGM’s movie, rather than the
Baum source material, so segments of the story that should be energized by
musical numbers are not. That’s because, despite the subtitle the film bore
during its Australian release, 20th
Century Oz is not precisely a musical. It’s a drama that contains a few
scenes in which characters perform music.

The other big shortcoming to Löfvén’s
approach is that he failed to invent a memorable stand-in for the Wicked Witch
of the West; as a result, the movie’s Dorothy spends a lot of time wandering
around the Australian countryside without any real obstacles in her way, save
for the elusive nature of the movie’s Wizard character. Nothing lacks momentum
quite like a road movie without a narrative structure predicated on clearly
defined dramatic conflict. On the plus side, the allusions to glam-rock culture
work well, and some of the tunes featured in the background of the movie are
memorable, even if they’re not fully integrated into the storytelling.

At the
beginning of the movie, Dorothy (Joy Dunstan) is a 16-year-old groupie looking
for kicks. Hopping into a van with a band that she sees perform one evening,
Dorothy gets knocked unconscious during a car accident. She emerges into a dream
state where the band members personify other characters, and the dream-state
Dorothy decides she must attend a concert by sexualized rock star The Wizard
(Graham Matters). Instead of Glinda the Good Witch, Dorothy meets a gay
clothier named Glin the Good Fairy (Robin Ramsaay), who provides Dorothy with
magic red shoes.

20th Century Oz is
decidedly adult, with four-letter words and fleeting nudity. That aspect of
the picture pays off with the film’s best image—Dorothy peels back a
shower curtain to discover The Wizard without his stage makeup, thereby
providing a clever riff on a moment from the MGM movie while also saying
something about the artifice of glam-rock. Getting there requires slogging
through a lot of drab scenes, and it’s hard to generate much rooting interest
in Dunstant’s petulant characterization. That said, good luck getting the
movie’s bouncy theme song, “Living in the Land of Oz,” out of your head.